With the possible exception of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, surely the most blatant public display of female flesh outside of porn magazines and videos is this parade of “angels” on CBS. (The real angels must be weeping.)

Mother Hen must say no self-respecting chicken would trot around unfeathered in such a shameless manner. They would rather die first!

Do women actually watch this garbage, or is it only male humans, drooling all over their remotes like basset hounds sniffing kibble? Please tell Mother H. that none of you, her precious chicks, patronize this foolishness!

Repeat after MH:

These are not real women. These are creatures altered by scalpel, air-brushing, padding, starvation, make-up, flattering lens filters and angled shots

We will not compare ourselves to these live mannequins.

We will refuse to patronize Victoria’s Secret stores, online or storefront, until they stop this sexist nonsense.

We will do everything in our power to convince the male humans sharing our coops not to watch this atrocity. When they view this or any other objectification of our fair sex, it degrades their opinion of all females, including us.

Labeling this underwear pageant a fashion show is an insult to genuine fashion.

Please understand Mother Hen, dearies. She is not concerned at all with what you do in the privacy of your own nest, or what you choose to wear underneath your clothing when out and about. No, no, no, Mother is not a total prude, despite her genteel demeanor.

What galls MH is the promotion of underwear as outerwear, and the attempt to normalize scantily clad women prancing across our TV screens by labeling it as fashion. As if the soaps and dramas and movies weren’t already bad enough!

Victoria’s Secret’s eggstravaganza has as little to do with fashion as SI’s swimsuit edition has to do with sports. The saddest thing is that this particular display is funded by other women, everyday women, every time they make a purchase from VS. We have the power to stop this madness, ladies. Let your money go to retailers who show respect for the females of this world, and leave Victoria’s Secret’s “angels” out shivering in the cold where they belong! The “girlcot” is on!

As Mother Hen contemplates the shameful nastiness that they call campaign ads these days, and the awful news about young people driven to suicide by bullying, she sees a correlation.

Politics is apparently all about bullying. If Politician A calls Politician B a lazy, tax-wasting, unproductive, fat cat with a record as dirty as used kitty litter, Politician B is obliged to then call Politician A a left-wing, terrorist-loving wing-nut who is as squirrelly as a tree-hugging rodent. One wonders if they are also texting insults to each other after school.

When (or perhaps Mother H. should say if) our public officials quit acting like a bunch of snot-nosed punks immature youngsters on the playground, maybe they would get around to campaigning on an actual platform of meaningful policies. MH is still such a cock-eyed optimist at heart!

No wonder, then, that human teenagers have nothing better to do than torture each other in their free time. There must be quite a few senators-in-training striding through the halls of academic institutions these days.

Now how on earth are we to convince the young folks that it is wrong to slander their peers when the so-called leaders of the Western world are flinging more mud than a litter of piglets in spring?

Mother Hen not only denounces the behavior of these over-grown juvenile delinquents naughty children, she calls on all adult voters to reject all poop-pitching candidates by giving the stinky-handed slimeballs ladies and gentlemen exactly what they deserve: nothing. That’s right – zippo, zilch, zero, nil, nix, nada – no votes for bad-mouthing their opponents, their predecessors, the president, or even Lady Gaga (much as she deserves it)!

Stopping bullies begins at home, or in this case, at Congress. How can you people tell your children to be kind, civil, and respectful of others if you elect muck-raking, reputation-besmirching, character-denigrating men and women to lead your country?

If Muslims are not allowed to place a building anywhere in the vicinity of 9/11’s Ground Zero, then logically no Christian structures should exist in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (Mother has it on good authority [those house cats again] that the US made some very big ka-booms happen in those places.)

If Muslim girls are forbidden to wear headscarves in schools, as Mother H has heard is happening somewhere over the big pond in a place called Your Rope, then you can bet your nest eggs that soon no students there will be allowed to wear crosses or Stars of David around their necks.

Conversely, when you insist on freedom for yourself, you extend that same freedom to everyone else.

If the Ten Commandments were in public buildings, then verses from the Koran should be displayed as well.

If the Lord’s Prayer were to be reinstated in public schools, then Buddhist chants would be acceptable too.

Mother Hen holds these truths to be self-evident.

Don’t give her any nonsense about the nation’s traditions and culture being exclusively Christian either, because that is a pile of cow droppings. The first freedom established in the USA was the freedom of religion, and that is the nation’s heritage.

You can’t have it both ways, people. Either everyone is free to practice their religion anywhere in the country, or everyone is going to have to accept the same limitations. Yes, that means you too.

That would mean that if Mother Hen thinks your church is too close to her sacred cows, you might have to move your church. Now wouldn’t that cause a squawk! Of course it would, because it just plain wouldn’t be fair!

Limiting people’s actions because of their religious beliefs is a practice that reeks of bigotry and prejudice in the same way Farmer Brown’s pig farm reeks of sweet country air.

I take my iPod everywhere. It is practically my BFF! I love my tunes so much, but I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to download songs for free. What’s up with that?

I am only a teenager with a part-time McJob. There is no way I could pay for all my music, so I don’t think it’s fair that some adults out there want to charge us for stuff that we can get for nothing! Besides, everybody else does it, so what difference does it make? I’m sure iTunes isn’t going to fold up and die if I don’t use their site, and I don’t see how come they should have my money.

I’m going to keep downloading from the free sites, but I feel just a little guilty about it. I’m not doing anything wrong, right?

Downloading Diva

Dear Downloading Diva,

Here’s what’s up with downloading songs for free.

1. File sharing copyrighted material is illegal.

I thought I would mention this first, because it ought to matter. True, it is not like a police officer will show up at your door to arrest you or give you a ticket or anything, but that is only because they can’t track you down…yet. You asked about what is right and wrong though, and disobeying the law is wrong, plain and simple.

If there are laws against something, generally it is because someone will get hurt if you do it. Who gets hurt by free downloading ?

2. Artists get ripped off.

When you don’t pay, guess who doesn’t get paid? Those bands, vocalists, and songwriters that you say you love so much, get nada for their work. How would you feel if you didn’t get paid for the work you do at your job? I bet that you wouldn’t like it much.

You state that you don’t think it’s fair for you to have to pay for your music because you don’t have a lot of money. Does not having much money make it alright to go into the variety store and lift a pocketful of candy bars? (I hope that your mother raised you right and you said no!)

Downloading music without paying is stealing. That is all there is to it.

3. It does make a difference.

Let’s say that you have about two thousand songs on your iPod. At ninety-nine cents a tune that comes to $1,980. (Now you are sure you can’t afford it, right?) Think of it this way though. You have taken away almost $2,000 dollars out of the music industry. If every single student in your chemistry class did that (and maybe they do), that would be around $69,300.

There is a lot of controversy about how much money the music industry is losing to file sharing, because if those who download for free had to pay, obviously they would download less, so exact dollar figures are hard to come by. There is no doubt though that they would still be paying for a lot more music than they are now, right? If you and your friends had to pay for your music, you might have less on your iPods, but more money would go into the music business.

4. Why should you care?

Reason # 1 Jobs! There are a many people who depend on the recording industry for their income, and less money going in means fewer jobs for those people.

Reason # 2 Less money means fewer new acts are discovered. Your next favorite band might never get a break if there are fewer talent scouts and auditions.

Reason #3 Making music is hard work, and people should be paid for their work, especially when they are people whose music you love and adore.

Mother Hen realizes that it is tough being a teenager with limited means, but she is not going to tell you it is okay to steal. If you continue to download free music, then she thinks that you probably ought to feel at least a little guilty. If you don’t pay the price, that’s the price you have to pay.